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Friday, January 29, 2016

All of a sudden, we’re cool. We’re in. We’re A CAUSE. There
was a time when fat girls were just so. They were the ones the boys told their
troubles to. The girls who sat on beds watching the hot girls get ready for a
date, promising to make the 9:30 pm phone call in case she needed an out. Or
the ones who just-jilted boyfriend called, secure that he could expose his
judgemental side, his chutiyapan, his belief that it was OK to tell his
girlfriend that she, at 53kgs should lose weight because Hey! He wouldn’t be
asking me out soon.

Of course Fat Girls would find love. Some of them, great,
soaring aarias of it. Clothes-tearing, button ripping, sex on conference room
table searing romantic novels of it. But often, it’s not the sort written
about. People don’t want to read about the vanquishing of a chocolate bar,
alone, at 2 in the morning, after a Fat Girl has come home from a date on which
everything was perfect, but the waiter smirked at her order of a burger, in
place of the Thin Girl staple-green salad or soup. People don’t want to know
that although he asked her to sit on his lap, she was afraid to, because she
was too tired to hover, placing at least ten kilos on her own knees in order to
keep them off his lap, and if she had allowed her extra fat to land, then he
would be all OMG how much do you weigh?! So she was drowning the awkward memory
in a whole bottle of Coke.

But now, things are different. Now, we’re in the game. The
Thin People have taken notice. Those who have many Fat Friends. You met the
type (“Akchilly most of my friends are fat!” “Poor thing, she doesn’t eat so
much and is gymming also. Must be some other problem.) Words like Fat-Shaming,
Body-Shaming, #iwontcompromise and #Imnoangel are out there to empower us and
deliver us from a life of being the underdog. Fellow Fat Girls! Celebrate! We
now have a tribe! We are a people! We are a race! We are not women. We are
Plus. Just like they say in all the fashion websites. Soon, we will be an
institution. Perhaps, in time, we will be a Kingdom. We will have invasions. We
will have political policy. We will have armies! Ranks of Fat Girls fortified
with gymming and chocolate bars, waving the Fast Shaming rules in the face of
our tormentors. We will have publications. Marches. Who knows! Even a Fat Day!
In which every empathizer with our cause will wear a fat suit and carry slogans
like “Fats have Feelings too!” “Fat Girls are our Sisters!”

The Government will declare a law that anyone using the word
“Fat” in a public place will be jailed immediately! Companies will have to
employ 25% Fat Girls in order to maintain diversity, and even food labels will
have to bear a disclaimer every time the word “Fat” appears on it. Two if the
word is “Fat-Free.” In time, there will be a tax exemption on money spent on a
Fat Girl. Extra if the spender was non-judgemental and allowed her a dessert
and a soft drink!

No one will want to be Fat. But it will be OK for some to
follow the path. And understood when people make lectures on “born, as opposed
to choice.” There will be support groups too. “Lovers of Fat Girls” “Parents
and Friends of Fat” “Being Fatulous” and “Sizelicious”.

We have years and years to go before we stop calling people
out for being different. Someday, maybe we will. Until then, we Fats will have
to contend with being a Cause. With people leaping to our defense in movies, by
song and even getting in to fist fights in some dramatic situations! We now
have the terminology that encapsulates all the humiliation, all the frustration
and the hurt we have felt by being at the receiving end of clumsy jokes and
cleverly disguised barbs that sting only hours after it’s too late to do
anything.